CARLOS MAKES GOOD
"Don't, please, Mr. Colter!" Olive faltered.
Frieda clutched at Jean's skirts, with big tears in her eyes, and Jean
stared at the scene with a frightened face. Ralph Merrit had walked some
distance away and Ruth had gone back to their tent, worn out by her
second disappointment over Jack's failure to return. The three girls who
remained had rarely seen anyone so angry as Jim Colter. He had not
spoken when Carlos first returned; now he made the boy stand up before
him and give an account of himself.
Ruth was crying when she heard a swish of a whip through the air and
thought she caught the sound of a sob from Frieda. She listened again.
Jim was speaking in a voice she did not know he could use, and for a
minute she turned quite cold.
"You deserter," the voice said harshly. "I forgave you for running away
from camp this morning, when I told you to stay behind, and then when I
leave you for an instant you turn traitor the second time. There is no
blood of an Indian Chief in your veins; they at least keep faith with
their friends." Swish! Ruth knew the whip had struck again.
She slipped quietly on the scene. Olive and Frieda were both crying, and
Jean was biting her trembling lips. Jim's face was crimson and his blue
eyes blazed as only a man's can who is slow to anger. Only Carlos stood
as still as stone. He had but one thin shirt over his slender body, but
when he staggered it was from fatigue not pain. He bore his punishment
with the silence and fortitude of an Indian warrior.
Jim had lifted his stick for the third time and this blow he meant to
make the severest of all. A small, white hand closed over the raised
whip. "Stop, Mr. Jim," Ruth said quietly. "Carlos is a child and
whatever he has done he is too tired for you to punish him now. I think
he did not mean to desert Jack any more than you did." Ruth did not
intend her words as a reproach, but Jim's arm dropped quickly to his
side and he turned so pale that she was frightened. "Take Carlos away
and see that he has something to eat," he ordered Olive, "and, Jean,
make Frieda stop crying." Without glancing at Ruth, Jim picked up a
flask of beef tea, which he had had prepared for Jack's return, and
without another word set out to search for Jack.
A little later Ralph Merrit proposed that he too should go out to
reconnoiter. Having also met with misfortune at "Miner's Folly," he knew
the country all about the neighborhood. The young man was saying good-by
to Ruth and Frieda, when Jean's face, paler and more wistful than usual,
appeared over her chaperon's shoulder.
"Ruth, dear, Olive and I want to go with Mr. Merrit to look for Jack,"
she begged. "Yes, I know it is awfully selfish of us to leave you, but
we are perfectly worn out with waiting. Besides, Jack don't know Mr.
Merrit and he will never be able to persuade her to return with him."
Ralph laughed. "Frieda, won't you give me the blue ribbon on your hair
to prove to your sister I have been a guest of the caravan party?" he
asked. "Though, of course, I don't believe she would be so obstinate."
Frieda solemnly unwound the band of ribbon which she used to keep her
hair out of her eyes, and Ralph tied it in his buttonhole, where the
ends floated out like blue pennants; but understanding their impatience,
Ruth let Olive and Jean go to assist in the search for Jack.
It was now broad daylight; the birds were singing and the sun shining
with the peculiar brilliancy that follows a rain-washed night. Ruth put
Frieda to bed, as the little girl was exhausted; then she persuaded
Carlos to lie down on her own cot. The boy had said nothing, only he
never let go the gray ball of fur which he had brought home from the
woods, but kept it pressed close to him. Ruth had no idea what animal
Carlos had found, though it had a sharp, pointed nose, restless eyes,
and every now and then tore at something with its baby teeth. Hidden
near an old tree in the woods back of the gold mine, Carlos had run
across a baby wolf cub, and having a curious fellowship with animals,
had brought it back with him, hoping he might be allowed to raise it as
a dog.
The ranch girls knew of Carlos' strange communion with birds and beasts.
They would come at his call and eat out of his brown hand, but it did
not seem remarkable to them, as the boy had lived always in the open and
was only a half-tamed creature himself.
Ruth left the children alone in the tent. Fifteen minutes later she
returned and Carlos had again disappeared. This time she made up her
mind that the Indian boy must be sent back to his own people, since they
could do nothing to stop his disobedience. But Olive had been trying to
teach the little fellow to read and write, and in straightening up her
bed Ruth found a piece of torn yellow paper. On it Carlos had written in
quaint, scrawling letters: "I Go Girl Never Afrid. Find Not, Come Back
Not."
Ruth put the letter away; her heart once more softened toward the lad,
hoping for his sake that he might be the one to bring Jack to them.
But no one need have been troubled about Jack on this wonderful summer
morning. Quite comfortably she awoke in her nest of branches to a
bewildering chorus of song, a little stiff, of course; hungry and
thirsty. But climbing out on the ground, she ran for half a mile until
the soreness was out of her muscles and the surging blood warmed her
heart and cheeks. Jack took off her sweater, carrying it under her arm,
the wind blew back her hair, which had the colors of the sun in it, her
lips were open and full and a deep crimson. If ever any of the old-time
pagan goddesses that one reads of in mythology sheds her influence over
the modern girl, Jack had drawn some of her spirit from Diana. She
looked as you might imagine Diana to have looked after she had spent the
night hunting with her maidens in some lonely forest--fresh, brilliant
and gay.
When Jack stopped to rest from her run she saw, near the rocky gorges
and in many of the waste places, red cacti blooming against the gray
buttes, like splashes of flame. Gathering a little she stuck it in her
belt, but Jack hoped to discover a cactus plant of a different kind. Her
father and Jim had taught her all they knew of the plants and flowers
that grow in the American desert, for they wished her to be prepared for
just such an emergency as had now befallen her. At first Jack kept close
to the path at the side of the gorge, retracing the steps she had
wrongly taken the night before. When she came beyond the thicket through
which the cougar had followed her, a stretch of arid country spread
away to her right on this side the gorge. Standing in the desert with
nothing about it but sand and sage brush, Jack spied the cactus she
sought. It rose like a tree, with thick, bunchy leaves at its base, and
dozens of clusters of small mustard-colored flowers on separate branches
sticking out from its summit like the ribs of an umbrella.
The American aloe has been the salvation of many a traveler in the
desert country of the West. Hurrying to it, Jack cut away some of the
thick leaves and then settling herself comfortably in the sand she
sucked the sap from the leaves until her throat was no longer parched
and her hunger and thirst were both appeased.
She was resting, trying to make up her mind to go back to the ravine,
where Jim would surely find her, when she heard a well-known whistle. It
was not like the note of a bird, and yet it did not seem to come from a
human throat, yet Jack recognized it at once. It was the odd sound
Carlos made when calling to the birds in the woods or fields. The call
had traveled a great distance in the clear morning air.
Jack clapped her hands loudly. "I am coming, Carlos, I am coming," she
cried; "wait for me." Then she ran back toward the edge of the cliff.
She would have liked to cry out with pleasure when she first saw Carlos,
but instead kept quite still.
The lad had made himself a whistle from a stalk of wild grass that grew
like a reed. He was wandering along searching everywhere for Jack, yet
beguiling his way with wonderful woodland noises which he made through
his whistle. A robin sat perched on his black hair, several other birds
fluttered over his head, afraid to alight and yet unwilling to leave
him. If Jack had suggested the huntress Diana, Carlos looked like a
follower of Pan. Surely in mythological days just such red-brown boys
had accompanied the old wood god, making the weird and eerie music that
caused a smile to hover ever on his wild face.
The caravan party, except Jim and the truants, were eating luncheon when
Jack and Carlos burst in upon them. Jack flew to Ruth, flinging her arms
about her and giving her a breathless hug. "It was all my fault, as
usual," she explained, "but there is nothing the matter with me except a
bruise on my forehead and an empty feeling in another place." Jack
stopped, suddenly discovering the presence of the stranger, Ralph
Merrit.
Hugging Jack with one arm, Ruth respectfully shook hands with Carlos
with the other. The small lad tried not to show emotion, but a light of
triumph shone in his eyes. He and not the "Big White Chief" had found
"The Girl Who Was Never Afraid." Now surely he would be forgiven the sin
of his failure to keep faith.
Worn and haggard, Jim returned a few hours later to find his
fellow-travelers engaged in cheerful conversation and seemingly
forgetful of the strain.
"I hope nothing will happen to me again while we are on this trip," Jack
remarked carelessly. "I thought last night in the storm that the gypsy
who came to our ranch had surely put her curse on me. You know she
announced that something would happen to me that would force me to
depend on other people, and as I had to depend on Carlos to show me the
way home to the caravan, perhaps the spell is past."
Olive, sitting next Jack, gave a shudder. She had never confessed how
much she had thought of the woman's evil words to her, but Frieda, who
was playing with the stones Jack had brought back from the gold mine,
made a quick turn in the conversation.
"Jean," she announced indignantly, "you told me you'd give me the gold
Jim and Jack brought from the mine with them, and now they haven't
brought any, because Ralph Merrit says these rocks are no better than
other pebbles. I really did think they might find some gold, though I
said I knew they wouldn't," she ended mournfully.
Jean laughed. "Same here, baby. I confess I thought maybe they would
come home with a grand discovery and we would all be as rich as cream
forever afterwards. Did you have any such idea in your head, Jack?"
Jack blushed. "Not really," she conceded; "but of course as soon as one
hears anything about a gold mine, one goes quite crazy. Remember how we
used to plan, when we were little girls, to run away and find the 'Pot
of Gold at the End of the Rainbow' as soon as we grew up?"
Jean and Frieda nodded, but the entire party was soon busy with their
plans for resuming their trip in the early morning. Jim asked Ralph
Merrit to go along to the Yellowstone Park with them. The young man had
been through the western reserve once before, and since his experience
with Jack, Jim thought it might be just as well to have another man to
divide responsibilities for the remainder of the trip.
By nine o'clock the next day the caravaners had moved away from the
quiet oasis in the desert, their tent had been folded up and the horses
reluctantly driven from the fresh grass. The little place had become but
a memory to its dwellers by the wayside.